Liturgical Writing 1: Rev. Nancy McAndrew1.Describe
how ADF's order of ritual expresses the following concepts: "Serving the
people"; "Reaffirming shared beliefs"; "Reestablishing the
cosmic order"; "Building enthusiasm". (Min. 500 words)Humans wrestle with the conviction that we are more than the sum
of our physical parts. At our core we rebel at the idea that we are
merely animate matter. We feel our own individuality; our consciousness
transcends our physical self. One way in which we demonstrate this sense
of “more than matter” is when we seek connection with the spiritual. I
believe it is in the seeking of this connection that we begin to cultivate our
best selves and begin to truly become more than a collection of instinct and
automatic synaptic response. Propagating a spiritual life enhances one’s
existence. In this way, religious and spiritual pursuits improve our
individual human conditions and offer us a deeper level on which to connect
with our fellow homo-sapiens.Serving the People: If we accept that humans may find fulfillment and a satisfying
sense of meaning by participating in spiritual work, then any endeavor which
promotes that work is of service to the people. We humans hunger for a
sense of belonging, a sense of fitting into some sort of order. It is
this very hunger that is fed by religious cosmologies. We want to know
that there is a plan, or at least a pattern to existence. The ADF COoR
offers just that.

When we ritually Re-Establish the Cosmos, we connect ourselves to
the pattern of existence and re-affirm our place in the order.
Additionally, ADF ritual offers the folk the opportunity to make offering
to the Kindreds and, in return to receive the gifts of the Kindreds. This
opportunity to fully engage with the spiritual world feeds a deep part of
ourselves. Entering into and strengthening a reciprocal relationship with
the Kindreds should be an integral part of a personal pagan practice, and ADF
allows the folk the opportunity to do precisely that (Corrigan). The Return
Flow literally bestows upon the folk the wisdom or blessings from the Gods,
Ancestors, and Land wights. Reaffirming Shared Beliefs: “The more your participants know and accept the intellectual,
artistic, psychological, social, and spiritual worldviews to be expressed by
your liturgy, the more effective they will be affirming a group mind and the
more each individual will get out of their experience” (Bonewits, 59).
ADF used to have a step early in ritual called Establishing
the Egregore, or group mind. The intention is to get everyone on the same
wavelength, linked together in intention and in agreement as to how to further
the goals of ritual. We do this through meditation, group chanting, and
reminding the participants what we have in common (Bonewits, 29). The Two
Powers meditation, often used at the very beginning of ritual, grounds the
participants, sets the stage for meaningful ritual trance, and begins the work
of connecting the microcosm of the individual celebrant to the macrocosm of the
cosmos which be liturgically fleshed out later in ritual. Chants early in
ritual are useful to reinforce the egregore.As an orthopraxic religion we have an uneasy relationship with the
word “belief.” We are really reaffirming what we agree will be true for
the duration of the ritual which allows folk with a wide-ranging set of belief
to function together as a cohesive people in ritual. ADF ritual reaffirms
our group consensus that spiritual beings are real and external to us. We
gather and open a channel of communication, via Opening the Gates, to those
beings who reside in the Otherworlds, namely the gods and our ancestors.
Our ritual further demonstrates that we believe that spiritual beings can
and will enter into a gift/boon-based relationship with us. This is
reaffirmed when we make sacrifices and offerings in ritual and then ask the
beings, via the Omen-taking, addressed if they have accepted our gifts and/or
what they offer in return. The folk then receive these reciprocal gifts via
the Return Flow.Re-establishing the Cosmic Order: Isaac Bonewits writes that, “a necessary
first step to re-creating the cosmos seems to be defining a ritual center, the
place from which the new cosmos can be born” (Bonewits, 31). Each
public ADF ritual involves establishing the ritual space and participants
within the cosmic map. When we perform this step, we are re-affirming the
cosmic order and strengthening it. Our rites begin connecting with
spiritual currents when we define the Sacred Center, also referred to as
Establishing the Cosmic Order. Our ADF COoR includes step #5(Re)Creating the Cosmos

Sacred Center must be established in a
triadic Cosmos

The Three Worlds or Realms must be
acknowledged

The Fire must be included

Sacred Center is most commonly represented
as Fire, Well and Tree

Most I-E cosmologies offer some sort of tale about how order was
carved from chaos. ADF ritual taps into those mythological currents by
centering around three culturally appropriate elements which receives and
delivers sacrifice to the Otherworlds. In addition to the Sacred Fire,
some culturally appropriate elements could be a Well, Pillar, Tree,
Mountain, or even three fires. In my experience, the majority of ADF rituals employ a
Fire-Well-Tree model. The Fire is magically connected to the upperworlds and
serves as a conduit for offerings and blessing to travel from the folk to the
Gods and from the Gods to the Folk. Similarly, the Well connects the
ritual space and participants to the underworld carrying offerings to the halls
of the Ancestors and chthonic deities and blessings back to the Folk. The
Tree is the axis mundi, the lynch pin of the realms, around which the cosmos
turns. The Tree is rooted in the lower realms, and reaches through the
middle realms to uphold the upper realms.Building Enthusiasm: There is an energetic current to ADF ritual. Beginning
with explanations and internal meditations the folk are led through opening
prayers and the establishment of the egregore. These preliminary steps
are aimed at bringing the folk to a more unified mental state, each prayer or
offerings getting the participants more in tune with one another and the
current of the ritual itself (Bonewits, 29). By the time the Gates are
opened the ritual has ideally reached its first plateau. When honoring
the Kindreds, energy and enthusiasm are again rising. Songs, chants, and
the opportunity for individual offering serve to keep building the current to
its apex which is the main sending of power to the deities of the occasion,
often called the main sacrifice (Bonewits, 35). This is the peak of the
ritual and is immediately followed by the Omen; the main sacrifice and omen act
as the ritual hinge after which the energy is unwound (Bonewits, 41).2.Create
a prayer of praise, offering, or thanksgiving to a deity modeled on a mythic,
folkloric, or other literary source of at least 75 words. Include a summary of
what your sources were and how you utilized them (summary at least 150 words).At the center of the worlds I remember YmirCarved by the cosmic cow Ymir of the RimeBegetter of Buri
Ymir First FatherCruelly cut
by Odin Vili, VePulled into pieces
by Odin, Vili,
VeMade into Midgard
by Odin, Vili VeHeaven’s Dome
Ymir, your skullSalty seas
Ymir, your bloodStones of the Earth
Ymir, your bonesAt the center of the worlds I remember YmirCarved by the cosmic cow Ymir of the RimeHome of the folk,
First Father YmirI certainly consider the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson to
be a literary work. In the Edda is described the creation of the
world from the butchered body of Ymir, one of two original beings. Ymir
is killed by the sons of Bor, Odin, Vili, and Ve. From Ymir’s blood they
made the seas, from his body the earth, mountains from his bones, pebbles from
his teeth, and, finally, from his skull they fashioned the dome of the sky
(Young, 34-35). Using the tale as inspiration, I composed the above piece to be
used as a part of the Re-Creation of the Cosmos.I consider it a poem of praise.The structure of the poem is loosely based on Old English poetry
in that each line is made up of two verses (or half-lines) divided by a
caesura. The rhyme, such that there is, is alliterative. The lifts
and drops (stressed and unstressed syllables) do not conform to any of the Old
English poetic styles. However, in the stanzas which include reference to Ymir,
each verse contains two lifts. The stanza containing reference to Odin,
Vili, and Ve breaks this pattern and the second stanza’s second verses each contain
three lifts. The purpose of that was to hint to the ear that something is
fundamentally changed once the sacrifice is made. 3.Discuss
a poem of at least eight lines as to its use of poetic elements (as defined by
Watkins): formulaics, metrics, and stylistics. Pay particular attention to use
of meter and phonetic devices, such as rhyme and alliteration. (Minimum 100
words beyond the poem itself.)Excerpt from “The Waste Land” by T. S. EliotI. THE BURIAL OF THE DEADAPRIL
is the cruelest month, breedingLilacs
out of the dead land, mixingMemory
and desire, stirringDull
roots with spring rain.Winter
kept us warm, covering 5Earth
in forgetful snow, feedingA
little life with dried tubers.Summer
surprised us, coming over the StarnbergerseeWith a
shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,And
went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10And
drank coffee, and talked for an hour.Bin
gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.And
when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,My
cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,And I
was frightened. He said, Marie, 15Marie,
hold on tight. And down we went.In the
mountains, there you feel free.I read,
much of the night, and go south in the winter.What
are the roots that clutch, what branches growOut of
this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20You
cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap
of broken images, where the sun beats,And the
dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,And the
dry stone no sound of water. OnlyThere
is shadow under this red rock, 25(Come
in under the shadow of this red rock),And I
will show you something different from eitherYour
shadow at morning striding behind youOr your
shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will
show you fear in a handful of dust. 30Frisch
weht der WindDer
Heimat zu,Mein
Irisch Kind,Wo
weilest du?“You
gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 35They
called me the hyacinth girl.”—Yet
when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,Your
arms full, and your hair wet, I could notSpeak,
and my eyes failed, I was neitherLiving
nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40Looking
into the heart of light, the silence.Öd’
und leer das Meer.Madame
Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,Had a
bad cold, neverthelessIs
known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45With a
wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,Is your
card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,(Those
are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)Here is
Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,The
lady of situations. 50Here is
the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,And
here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,Which
is blank, is something he carries on his back,Which I
am forbidden to see. I do not findThe
Hanged Man. Fear death by water. 55I see
crowds of people, walking round in a ring.Thank
you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,Tell
her I bring the horoscope myself:One
must be so careful these days.Unreal
City, 60Under
the brown fog of a winter dawn,A crowd
flowed over London Bridge, so many,I had
not thought death had undone so many.Sighs,
short and infrequent, were exhaled,And
each man fixed his eyes before his feet. 65Flowed
up the hill and down King William Street,To
where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hoursWith a
dead sound on the final stroke of nine.There I
saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!You who
were with me in the ships at Mylae! 70That
corpse you planted last year in your garden,Has it
begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?Or has
the sudden frost disturbed its bed?Oh keep
the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,Or with
his nails he’ll dig it up again! 75You! hypocrite
lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”Formulaics as defined by Watkins, are those phrases repeated
through the family of Indo-European literature which indicate, by their repetition
and recurrence, values or themes held to be important within a culture. For a
phrase to be considered a formula it must have a consistent metrical structure
as well as present oft-encountered theme. An example would be the theme
of “imperishable fame.” Watkins presents case after case of the concept
of a man’s unquenchable fame and offers this grammatical formula, “where a man
in the subject, the notion HAVE (IMPERISHABLE FAME) is expressed either by the
verb BE (*h,es-) and a dative pronoun (PRO), or by a true verb (e.g., *segh-,
*dheh,- middle) and a subject pronoun, together with an optional form of
the word for EVER(LASTING), ETERNITY, LIFETIME. . .here a god is the subject
the verb is GRANT (e.g. *dheh,- active) and the indirect object (man) is
expressed in the dative pronoun (PRO)” (Watkins, 177-8). I can find no
instances of any of the specific formulas discussed by Watkins in this section
of The Waste Land though Eliot extensively employed what he referred to
as the Mythic Method which is, in many ways, arguably a contemporary use of
formulaics drawing from all of classical literature and not just ancient
Indo-European texts. If we move away from the detailed grammatical analysis of
‘Watkinite’ formulas and focus on his broader definition, “formulas are the
vehicles, the carriers of themes; they are the collectively the verbal
expression of the traditional culture of the Indo-Europeans themselves”
(Watkins, 152), then we may begin to discern such in The Waste Land.
What else is literary allusion, but reference to a shared literary
culture? Eliot’s inclusion of fragments of classical literary works is
precisely that, an invocation of culture. The clearest example perhaps is
found in “The Burial of the Dead” in lines 62 & 63, “A crowd flowed over
London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many.” This
mirrors an image from Dante’s Inferno lines 55-57, “si lunga tratta / di
gente, ch’io non avrei mai creduto /che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta” (Eliot’s
notes). Roughly translated in my imperfect Italian, the last two lines
double-checked by GoogleTranslate, we read, “such a long line / of
people, I would never have believed / that death had undone so many.” Dante
surely is a part of the Indo-European literary tradition, called up in Eliot’s
work to reinforce the surprise at the size of the ranks of the dead.
Eliot is using this formula to emphasize his theme of the death
within life that plagues modern life.Metrics is the formal arrangement of stressed and unstressed, or
long and short syllables. Eliot intentionally abandoned notions of
poem-wide meter and instead, throughout The Waste Land employs meter at
intervals to abruptly alter the tone, to draw attention to a new speaker, or
when quoting another literary work. In this first section of the poem,
there is no unifying meter. Nevertheless, The first four lines are fairly
straightforward iambic meter which might offer a sense of stability, but the
enjambment interrupts the flow. By line 5, the meter begins to dissolve.Eliot offers an excerpt from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde,
verses 5-8 which is written in iambic dimeter. When we consider “Burial of the Dead” by the light of what Watkins
refers to as stylistics we find some meat to sink our teeth into.
If we accept stylistics as “all the other formal features of language,”
(Watkins, 21) or, more to the point as “what makes a verbal message a work of
art” (Watkins, 32) then we can examine Eliot’s masterpiece for his linguistic
choices, for what makes it an important piece of modern poetry and not just a
statement. Eliot consciously employs references, allusions, and images,
making artistic word choices to maximize the effect of each word in order to
evoke a strong response in the reader. His goal is to evoke in the reader a
sense of loss, of barrenness, and of shock over the dissolution of spirituality
in the modern age. The first seven lines of the poem employ juicy fertility gerunds
(breeding, mixing, stirring, covering, feeding) which are juxtaposed with
language of desolation: “the cruellest month,” “dead land,” “ dull roots,” “
winter,” “forgetful, “ “dried tubers.” This precise use of language sets
the tone for the whole piece and introduces the tension of expecting to find
fertility where there ultimately is none. The unity which should
arise from the rhyming gerunds is instead stilted and disjointed due to the
enjambment. The lines from the Hyacinth girl (35 -42) seem to be spoken in
apostrophe. This is a poetic device not seem overly much in modern
poetry. Eliot’s use here may be a way of invoking a more classical form
of poetry, or he may be indicating that the speaker is engaged in discussion
with herself. Either way, the result is a feeling of emptiness, of
solitude, of something lost (either the formal poetic form, or her companion).
Lines 65 and 66 offer a rhyming couplet. There are lines
throughout The Burial of the Dead which offer rhyme, but more often rhyme a
word with itself; lines 25 & 26, 28 & 29 (which are also written using
parallelism) and 62 & 63. These flashes of rhyming intentionally remind the
reader of formal poetic styles. However, those styles lay broken through
the body of the text, a comment on the dissolution of society and culture.4.Create
a prayer suitable for the main offering of a High Day rite which includes
invocation of at least one deity suitable to the occasion, description of the
offering and its suitability to the occasion, and the purpose of the offering,
totaling at least 100 words. Any stage directions necessary for performance of
the offering should be included.I stand in the sacred grove on the day of the vernal equinoxThe Earth agrees to bring forth life, Demeter rejoices in Her
daughter’s return.I rejoice in Her daughter’s return.I feel the rising sap,I feel the stirring seed,I feel the strengthening sun.Persephone, bouquet of violetsPersephone of the sunlit fieldPersephone, with red-stained lipPersephone, beloved by grainsPersephone of the deepest thronePersephone of the white cypressPersephone of the mirrorsPersephone, moved by OrpheusPersephone of the lyre’s tearPersephone of the Traveler’s giftPersephone of the hensPersephone of the secret seedPersephone of the melted snowPersephone of the shining stonesPersephone of the wreathed gravePersephone of the paw-pawPersephone of my garden.To honor your return, I bring you blooms (hold aloft the potted
violets), sweet violets, among the first to herald your approach.Persephone, turn your face to this quickening land, bless this
space with your bounty.Hail to you Persephone (pour an offering of oil on the Fire)[This question quite clearly states that the 100 word prayer must
include an invocation of at least one deity suitable to the occasion
(Persephone), description of the offering (“sweet violets”) and its suitability
to the occasion (“among the first to herald [Persephone’s] approach”), and the
purpose of the offering (“to honor Persephone’s] return,” and to “bless this
space”). The question does not ask for an essay of explanation. ] (this portion deleted for the final submission)The offering consists of “sweet violets” and a libation of
oil. Violets are mentioned Homer’s Hymn to Demeter as one of the flowers
being picked by Persephone when she is spirited away by Hades. Violets
are among the first flowers to bloom in the Spring to herald the return of
Persephone. Oil is a fairly standard offering to the Gods in ADF ritual.
The purpose of giving these gifts is foremost to honor Persephone, as the
Patron of the rite. The secondary purpose of the offerings is to ask
Persephone to give her attention to the “quickening land” and to bless the
immediate area of the offering. Works consulted:Bonewits, Isaac.Neopagan Rites: A Guide to Creating
Public Rituals that Work.
Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2007. Print.Corrigan,
I. (n.d.). The Intentions of Druidic Ritual. Retrieved June 26, 2015.Eliot, Valerie; ed. The Waste Land: A Facsimile and
Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound.
Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1971. Print.Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy; eds. The
Norton Anthology of Poetry Fourth Edition. New York; W. W. Norton,
1996. Print.Nagy, Gregory. "Homeric Hymn to Demeter." University of
Houston. Web. 2015. <http://www.uh.edu/~cldue/texts/demeter.html>. Serith, Ceisiwr. A Book of Pagan Prayer. San Francisco:
Weiser, 2002. Print.Watkins, Calvert. "Aspects of Indo-European Poetics." How
to Kill a Dragon Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. New York: Oxford UP,
1995. Print.Young, Jean; trans. Snorri Sturluson: The Prose Edda. Berkeley:
U. of California Press, 1954. Print.

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